


comforting lies

by excelxiors



Category: The Goldfinch - Donna Tartt
Genre: Angst, Fluff, Kissing, M/M, Suicidal Thoughts, Suicide Attempt, Vegas Era, but no homo ya know?, theo is suicidal and boris tries to make him feel better
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-02
Updated: 2019-09-02
Packaged: 2020-10-05 15:28:31
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,899
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20491076
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/excelxiors/pseuds/excelxiors
Summary: maybe he wasn’t telling me one of his comforting lies when he said those three words: i love you





	comforting lies

**Author's Note:**

> so uhh i am not a writer and have never written anything in my life but in my mania was possessed to write this. be nice to me, but constructive criticism is welcome (again, im not a writer).
> 
> tw for suicidal thoughts/actions  
its pretty much stuff that was mentioned in the book but if you think it'll be bad for you just be careful

At the time, it had felt like an endless succession of nights spent together, bleeding into one another until I couldn’t tell the days apart. Squished together on my too small twin mattress, our limbs tangled together, the smell of stale beer in the air, and Boris’ eyes on me when he thought I wasn’t looking. He was staring at me because he was afraid. Afraid of the things I would do and afraid of the places my mind might take me. My eyes were on him too, but for different reasons. When he was asleep, I stared at him with a strange mix of jealousy and desire, simply because I had never met someone so beautiful and so feral and so raw. He was careless and free; everything I wished I was, and everything I knew I could never be. 

I don’t remember all the nights, but with little reminders from Boris now, I remember more and more of them. I’d beg him to leave me in the street to die, to let me jump from the roof, to let me drink myself to death. He’d put his arms around me and hold me tight, telling me that it was okay, that it wasn’t my fault she had died. Comforting lies. After coaxing me back inside from the street or from the roof at some ungodly hour, we’d lay in bed together and finally, I’d be able to sleep. So many nights I fell asleep with his arms around my waist and his face in my neck, that once I left Vegas I had been unable to sleep well for weeks. I tossed and turned in bed, looking for the boy that I would not find again for many years.

One of those many nights saw me predictably upset and characteristically suicidal. It was well past midnight and we had been drinking and smoking for hours. The inebriation amplified my predictable upset mood and characteristic suicidal thoughts and tendencies, though I have never once even tried to stop self medicating since Boris introduced me to the feeling all those years ago. We had been walking around my neighborhood in the dark, no adults to tell us we needed to get a good nights sleep for school in the morning. My dad and Xandra would disappear for days at a time, leaving Boris and I alone without supervision, which was just how we liked it. We had walked relatively far from the house, coming up to a major road that was mostly empty (due to the hour of night) but still peppered with the occasional car. The vastness of the desert, the thought that I was so far from my home, and the unbearable feeling that I had been the reason my mother was gone suddenly hit me with more force than any car on that mostly empty street could. I began, at first, to cry, turning my face away from Boris so he wouldn’t see. Boris, though, always somehow attune to my emotions even blackout drunk or high out of his mind, turned to follow me, asking “Potter, what is wrong?” in a soft and slurred voice. 

I couldn’t walk away from him and I couldn’t ignore him, not when we were the only 2 people on the street and we had walked all this way together. “It’s my fault she’s dead, Boris,” was all I could get out before my tears turned into sobs.

“No, Potter!” Boris answered. “How many times have I said this? You could not have known and you did not set off that bomb. Is not your fault, Potter!”

“You tell me that to try and make me feel better, but you know it is.” I began to run towards the street. “You lie to me and tell me it’s not my fault but you know if it wasn’t for me we wouldn’t even have been there!”

“Potter, come back. We will go back to the house and sleep. Please calm yourself, Potter. Is okay!” He sounded frantic, then. His voice became fast and the slurred speech that I had previously heard seemed to be gone. He had sobered up in an instant.

It was at that point that I did what I had done many times. Once I was at the center of the street, I collapsed, laying down on the cold asphalt and sobbing “Leave me here, Boris. Leave me here to die. I don’t want to go back, I just want to die here.” I had meant every word of it, too. If you had asked me then whether or not I wanted to die, the answer would have been that I did. I was so desperate to see my mother, and so wracked with the guilt of her death, that given the option, I would have lied in that street until a car came and ran me over. At least then, I could be with her forever. Boris, however, didn’t seem fond of that option.

“Please, Potter. Stop this,” he begged.

I couldn’t stop. Once the tears started, they didn’t stop, and once I began to sob, my breaths became more and more erratic. I couldn’t breathe, my heart was pounding in my chest, and Boris was standing above me, seemingly afraid for the first time in his life. I rarely saw him afraid, but the look in his eyes was undoubtedly worry. “I wanna die,” I said again, in gasping breaths and through the tears and sobs that had overtaken me.

“Theo, please.” That had gotten my attention. Boris never called me Theo, and hearing my name did something to me that is still hard to explain. It didn’t make me want to die any less, but it did give me the impression that maybe Boris cared about me more than I had previously thought. I knew back then, of course, that he cared about me. He wouldn’t have spent every waking hour with me if he didn’t. But the hurt in his voice and the way he had said my name knocked me out of my black hole of upset and back into reality. “Come, Potter,” he whispered, holding his arms out to me. I stood up, and before anything else, he pulled me out of the street and back onto the empty path we had taken from my house. Once he knew we were safe, he wrapped his bony arms around me and held tight. “You scare me, Potter,” was the last thing he whispered into my ear before we walked back home in silence.

Once we had gotten back to the house, Boris convinced me that a shower would make me feel better. I didn’t want to argue with him, and because of the embarrassment I felt at the way I had acted in the previous hour, I went into the bathroom without a word and turned the water on. The water was hot and my tears were hot and I prayed that Boris couldn’t hear me crying. I waited until the tears stopped before getting out of the shower and changing. Others were afraid of Boris. They saw a bad kid, nothing but trouble that should be avoided at all costs. I was never afraid of Boris, but I was afraid of what he’d think of me when he saw me like this. 

Boris was laying on my bed, a tangle of sheets and the blanket and his body. It looked warm, and he beckoned for me to come. I closed my eyes for a couple of seconds, breathing in and out deeply before whispering “I’m sorry, Boris.”

“You have nothing to be sorry for, Potter. Is not your fault she died, but is also not your fault you feel the way you do. Come.” He scooted over in bed, making enough room for me to lie down. The bed was small, though, so regardless of how we positioned our bodies I could always feel the warmth radiating off him. I laid next to him so that we were facing each other. He wrapped one arm around my waist and pulled me closer, and with his other tenderly touched my face with a gentleness that I could hardly stand. Boris was generally anything bur gentle, so the gesture felt to me like it meant more somehow. “You are too hard on yourself.” His voice was quiet, as if he was trying not to wake someone. There was no one in the house but us.

“It feels pointless. There’s no reason to live anymore,” I answered. Tears were beginning to well up again, and I choked them back as I added “Nobody loves me now that she’s gone.” It felt odd to say. She was my everything, the only reason I had wanted to stay alive as a child. My father clearly didn’t care enough to stay, and even now he would leave me alone for days at a time. I had no extended family and Xandra was not a parental figure by any stretch of the word.

“Is not true, Potter.” Boris smiled. “Popchyk loves you,” he laughed, showing his crooked and yellowed teeth. This had gotten me to smile through my tears, though it didn’t make me feel much better. “And I love you. _Sérce moje._” He ran his thumb up and down my cheek. It seemed like something a boy might do to his girlfriend, but it felt nice nonetheless.

“You do?” I asked, bewildered. 

“Yes, yes, of course,” he responded quickly, as if it were obvious. Now that he had said it, I think he felt somewhat embarrassed about the confession. 

“I love you, too.” I blurted it out before I could stop myself, and Boris grinned at me. 

My face was still in his hands, and just as gently as he had stroked my cheek he put his lips to mine. It was startling and unexpected, his lips chapped and his mouth tasting like beer. But it was _Boris_. Boris’ mouth on mine. The kiss didn’t last long. It was soft and gentle and not anything too mind blowing, but it was nice. I felt, at once, as if maybe someone in the world cared for me. We fell asleep holding one another, my face in Boris’ neck and his face in my hair. We woke up tangled together, and didn’t speak about the events of the night before.

Eventually, the endless succession of nights ended. I didn’t wake up with my limbs tangled with Boris’, the smell of him on my clothes and his breath on my neck. He was in Las Vegas and I was in New York, thousands of miles away. But now, looking back, I think maybe his eyes were on me out of more than just fear. He was afraid, sure. Who wouldn’t be afraid for a kid who laid in the street begging for death? I looked at Boris because I _loved_ him, though I was loathe to admit it back then. Everything about him made my heart race, from his curly dark hair to his crooked teeth to his accent (mostly Eastern European but not entirely). But I like to think that maybe I made his heart race too. I like to think that maybe he wasn’t telling me one of his comforting lies when he said those three words: _I love you._


End file.
